The world’s largest and most influential development bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects. The decision by the board of the World Bank could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil. The ban has been formally in place since …
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Bill Gates Explains His Plans to Close the Gates Foundation in 2045
Donald Trump is the face of these cuts, but the cruelty of his administration is not the only story. After leaping upward in the 2000s, global giving for health grew very slowly through the 2010s. The culture of philanthropy has changed somewhat, too, with the age of the Giving Pledge — in which hundreds of the world’s richest people promised …
Read More »What to Know About Bill Gates’s Plans to Shut Down the Gates Foundation
In the next 20 years, Gates believes, progress will be ‘incredible.’ “This is a miraculous time,” he told me, with the most exciting work the foundation has ever done sitting in the R.&D. pipeline now, waiting to be delivered. It was almost hard to keep up with his survey of breakthroughs: on H.I.V., on tuberculosis, but also on more obscure …
Read More »Who Will Care for Infants With H.I.V. Overseas?
The Trump administration has dismissed the few remaining health officials who oversaw care for some of the world’s most vulnerable people: more than 500,000 children and more than 600,000 pregnant women with H.I.V. in low-income countries. Expert teams that managed programs meant to prevent newborns from acquiring H.I.V. from their mothers and to provide treatment for infected children were eliminated …
Read More »Lesotho, a Small African Nation, Expects a Big Hit From Trump’s Tariffs
The nation that the Trump administration slapped with the heftiest tariff this week is a small, rural, landlocked country in southern Africa that is among the world’s poorest. Lesotho, which makes denim that goes into American-branded jeans, was hit with a 50 percent tariff. It was among several lower-income countries on the continent that were shocked by levies high above …
Read More »Lesotho, a Small African Nation, Expects a Big Hit From Trump’s Tariffs
The nation that the Trump administration slapped with the heftiest tariff this week is a small, rural, landlocked country in southern Africa that is among the world’s poorest. Lesotho, which makes denim that goes into American-branded jeans, was hit with a 50 percent tariff. It was among several lower-income countries on the continent that were shocked by levies high above …
Read More »Millions of Women Will Lose Access to Contraception as a Result of Trump Aid Cuts
The United States is ending its financial support for family planning programs in developing countries, cutting nearly 50 million women off from access to contraception. This policy change has attracted little attention amid the wholesale dismantling of American foreign aid, but it stands to have enormous implications, including more maternal deaths and an overall increase in poverty. It derails an …
Read More »U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries but Continue Some H.I.V. and TB Aid
The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally. The administration has decided to continue some key …
Read More »Climate Change Made South Sudan Heat Wave More Likely, Study Finds
After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital city caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat. Climate change, largely caused by the burning of …
Read More »Biodiversity Talks in Rome End
While the Trump administration in Washington was cutting environmental programs, delegates at U.N. biodiversity talks in Rome made modest progress Thursday on a series of measures to support nature. Governments gathered to tackle global biodiversity losses that are unprecedented in human history, driven by the ways people have transformed the world. The seismic geopolitical changes of recent weeks loomed over …
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